We present the latest highlights from China Trading Desk’s Outbound Travel Survey with a focus on Middle East-bound Chinese travellers.

Gen Z shoppers buy with emotion, platforms sell with algorithms, and sustainability is the new fault line in China’s trillion-yuan e-commerce ecosystem.

Chinese travel platforms recorded a major uptick in Canada-related searches after Beijing ended a ban on group tours to the country

SINGAPORE, Oct. 25 -- Three decades after its launch, the Suzhou Industrial Park in east China's Jiangsu Province, the first intergovernmental project between China and Singapore, has grown into a bustling industrial hub, contributing 400.24 billion yuan (56 billion U.S. dollars) to regional GDP in 2024.

Foreign tourists in China are increasingly drawn to shopping, said Steven Zhao, CEO of China Highlights, a travel agency that organises tours of the country.

We partnered with a leading global private bank to survey 2,042 affluent Chinese households. The punchline isn’t “awareness” or “reach”. It’s a mid-funnel stall: families are clear on why (education, lifestyle, business expansion) but hesitate on how (documents, custody, FX, sequencing). The growth lever for private banks and wealth brands is service design, not louder ads.

In 2023, still in the aftermath of the pandemic, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) announced in Macau that China would “overtake the United States as the world’s largest tourism economy” by 2026.

This image portrays today’s reality in Travel Retail. It’s the wait before the walk-in. She’s not lost – she’s deciding. First time Chinese travellers pause to validate, compare and confirm before they ever step into a duty free shop.

SINGAPORE, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese travelers are now "a system-level driver of Singapore's visitor economy," Subramania Bhatt, a veteran tourism analyst based in the city-state, told Xinhua in a recent interview, noting that their travel patterns are increasingly extending beyond iconic landmarks, spilling over into smaller, niche itineraries and experiences.